‘Yes,’ I coughed, to hide my embarrassment. ‘For all books do.’
He smiled at this and sat down beside me. ‘You will find nothing in there that is not suitable for the eyes of women and servants – if only they could read it.’ (Here he gave a chuckle and patted my hand.) ‘Mama oversaw the stocking of it and so the Tyringham library has every book a gentleman could possibly require.’
‘Aye,’ said I, for I did not think it politick to point out his lack of Catullus and Sophocles and Seneca and Sidney, so I simply said, ‘Did your father not have a taste for ancient poets? Or Latin – or Greek?’
‘Nay,’ he said, with a flick of his hand. ‘The barons of Tyringham have no need to shut ourselves away with the meanderings of other tongues, for our place is by the King, to advance our name, and the King is a merry man, and we do not need to chant Latin at him.’
‘Tell me more of His Majesty,’ I said, twisting my body towards his. ‘Is he as tall and proud as they say? And what of the Queen? And of her ladies? Are they very clever and gay?’
He pressed his face into its thin-lipped smile, and told me of the King, and how he liked to play at tennis, and to hunt, and how he had a pack of little dogs with silken ears that barked around his ankles. The Queen, he said, was a quiet lady with foreign but noble ways, and he did not think much of some of her women, but he would not be drawn on why that was so.
‘’Tis not Her Majesty’s fault,’ he would only say. ‘For the King overruled her.’
‘And what do they like for entertainments?’ said I.
‘Ah,’ said my husband, wagging his finger. ‘Naughty child. For I know where this is leading. I shall say the King is known at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane and the Duke’s in Dorset Gardens, and there are many masques at Court, and other entertainments besides, for Rex has a good many friends, and they are all as merry as he.’
‘If only I could see it,’ I said, clasping my hands to my bosom. ‘For I know I should like it, and I should like to see Mrs Nelly, for ’tis said she is a wise and witty woman.’
‘But you never shall,’ said my husband evenly, ‘for a Tyringham woman’s place is not in the playhouse – there are such goings on there as would discompose any God-fearing wife. And so we shall hear no more of it, but take our exercise as planned.’
Not noticing my disappointment, he took my elbow then, and led me out into the sunshine. Swallowing his chastisement of me, I smiled to see the garden, which had many fine bushes and flowers in bloom. My husband began talking of the design, which had been done by his mother when she was newly wed, and he had not liked to change, though it was outmoded he supposed. Around the path we stepped, me with my hand on my husband’s arm, and he with his hand on mine, past the rows of sweet-smelling plants. I began to feel my spirits lift and a sort of happiness creep into the space under my ribs: that though my husband was a rigid man, I at least had a library, and a linnet in a cage that sang in the mornings, and these pretty gardens that I might walk in whenever I wished.
We came past a trio of great twisted yews, and stopped at an ornamental fountain with a great stone god as its centrepiece. Magnificent and terrible with his trident, the statue was dappled with green spores and flanked by cascades of flapping stone fish, from whose gaping mouths water trickled into the jade-coloured pool below.
‘Why, ’tis Poseidon,’ I said, dropping onto the curving stone seat, and dipping my fingers into the cool, green water. ‘’Twas he who drove his chariot through the waves and struck Acropolis with his spear – I’ll warrant that smarted! He often took the form of a horse, which must have been very merry, for who would not love to canter now and then?’ I gazed up at the statue. ‘I am happy to see him here, for he reminds me of my father and the tales he told me when I was a child.’ I swirled my fingers around.
‘Did you not hear me?’ said my husband.
‘Husband?’ I said.
‘Do not put your hands in the water, you fool – for ’tis brackish and like to cause chills.’
I took out my fingers and wiped them on my skirts, at which he frowned.
‘I was speaking of the return of Mama and Sibeliah,’ he said, ‘but you did not heed me with all your babbling.’
‘Ah, it will give me great joy to meet them properly at last,’ I said quickly, taking his arm again to placate him. ‘Our interview at the wedding was too fleeting. I miss my sweet Catherine greatly, and am overjoyed that I shall have a sister again – and a mother, besides,’ I added, searching his face to see if I had mollified him.
He shook me off, but his voice had softened when he said: ‘And in her you shall have the best of women. So godly and so sweet is she – in her I see every good quality a lady should have. I hope you may learn what it is to be a Tyringham woman from her, and that Sibeliah may be of good influence too, and your dearest bosom friend. Mama has taken great pains with her and she is the model of good womanhood.’
‘Oh aye,’ I said, though I crossed my fingers behind my back. Talk of devoutness was always like to bore me, but if there was one thing I had learnt thus far of marriage, it was to always seem pliable, though inside I might rail against my condition.
Tyringham crooked his finger towards the chapel.
‘Wife, it seems to be a fitting time to give thanks for our happy marriage. Let us go there together now.’
We knelt in the front pew of the empty church and Tyringham prayed aloud with his eyes fast shut that the Lord Jesu would keep us from sin and help us in our duties as a husband and wife before God. And as his voice echoed around the darkness of the room, my eyes lighted on a slant of sunshine that fell through the high mullioned window onto the altar, like a miracle from heaven, and in my head I heard myself saying over and over again, like a prayer, ‘Where there is light, there is hope. Amen.’
IV
HUSBAND
In which I note down the essentials of the man I married
NINETEEN FACTS ABOUT
MY HUSBAND,
LORD OSWOLD JAMES TYRINGHAM
Fact the first:
He has a habit when speaking of swallowing the end of sentences, and so people that do not know him are always having to say, ‘I beg your pardon, my Lord?’ ‘Can you repeat that, Tyringham?’ and so on.
Fact the second:
His skin is pale as milk, but his hair is starling-black. There is not much of it on the top of his head, but the stuff around his shoulders is as light and fluffy as spun sugar and lifts up in the gentlest breeze. His periwig is extravagantly curled all over, with a row of fat little curls on the crown which make me laugh. It lives on a block in his dressing room, and is combed out for nits on the first Tuesday of every month by Brignall. It came from a wigmakers called MESSRS. TALLENTYNE & TRUNDALL, DISTAFF LA., LONDON, which I know for ’tis printed on the box in gold lettering. The box, and the wig, both smell of tobacco and ale and the tang of men’s sweat.
Fact the third:
He is not often merry.
Fact the fourth:
His father was in service to the first King Charles, and then was a gentleman to Cromwell. The family, like many, got very Puritan then, and I think have not quite shaken it off. Tyringham has been in the King’s service since he was Restored and all the streets ran with wine, and my husband went and paid homage and got round the part about his papa and Cromwell, I do not know how. His official position is Master-General of the Ordnance, which means he gets supplies for the navy and army, and so he may award contracts, and has many people petitioning at him from morning ’til night.
Fact the fifth:
He is reasonably tall, I suppose, but not so much as Father, and he is a solid-built man with a paunch, whereas Father was slim, and so am I, despite all my efforts to be fat and fashionable.
Fact the sixth:
He does not like to bill and coo as I have seen some couples do (my aunt and uncle!), but occasionally takes my hand and bids me ‘And how do you do today, madame?’
Fact the seven
th:
He is not always lusty, but I often feel his eyes roaming up and down my person. Strangely for a husband (I think) he has bought me articles of dress: coarse knitted hose, the ugliest pair of low-heeled shoes. The day, at his insistence, I tried these on, he became much inflamed, and had me against the wall of my chamber, rubbing at the stockings and feeling for the shoes all the while. I was blushing all afternoon, and hid away all my plain clothes, though he asks frequently where they are and I pretend I have forgotten until I can put it off no longer. I wonder if this is usual for old husbands?
Fact the eighth:
He calls me dearheart and bunnykin, when we are in bed together, and before he is spent, but at no other time.
Fact the ninth:
He is not fond of dogs, and refuses me a spaniel.
Fact the tenth:
His body is carpeted all over with dark hair, with tufts rising up on his back near the shoulders, and a great drugget of it running down his front from his throat to his toes (which are squat-looking and yellow). When we lie together, I feel his bristly skin damp under my hands and recoil to touch it, though I try not to show it on my face.
Fact the eleventh:
He will not hear of childbearing or midwives, but is keen on the getting of heirs.
Fact the twelfth:
His favourite food is egg pie, followed by artichoke pie, followed by potage, and so he is oft complaining of stomach miasmas and a twisted gut. He spends a good while on the pot. He believes French kickshaws unsubstantial and a sweet tooth dissolute and ungodly! Despite this I cannot taper my passion for Naples biscuit, orange pudding and all kinds of fool. Fie!
Fact the thirteenth:
He has broken two bones in his life: his forefinger, which set strangely and is now half twisted round (I do not like to look at it, especially when he crooks it at things), and his nose, on a fall from his horse. The horse escaped without a scratch and is now retired and living with a widow at Bromley.
Fact the fourteenth:
He exercises his horse in the mornings for the King plays at sports whether fair or foul, and his courtiers have taken up the habit to please him. Some of them have taken up the King’s other fancies too, my husband says, which are poesie and the playhouse and wenching, but Tyringham does not follow him in those.
Fact the fifteenth:
He was surprised, when we met, at how grown-up I seemed in some ways but how like a child I was in others. I have pressed him to expound on this but he refuses. I told him when I met him I was afraid of him for I thought him much older than Father. He did not laugh along with me at this.
Fact the sixteenth:
He makes his ablutions (his words) every half year in the hip bath kept in the scullery. Between that he has a curdy kind of smell and a tang to his skin, especially his hinder parts.
Fact the seventeenth:
His father died of the last plague, in 1665. He caught it in London, after eating a dish of oysters at a tavern, and never came home again, but got locked up in the inn, and a cross put upon the door (this according to Sibeliah, who delights in the tale). Being riddled with the pestilence, his body was never brought home, but lies in a filthy pit near Bedlam.
Fact the eighteenth:
His closest friend is a man called Master Jeremiah Malloborne who lives in London, at Cheapside, but he does not often see him, save when he goes to Court, for Malloborne has nine children and is therefore asleep by eight of the clock most evenings because of the exhaustion.
Fact the nineteenth:
He does not love me. I am as sure of that now, as I am of anything.
V
RELATIONS
In which I get acquainted with my husband’s family
My husband’s mother and sister surprised us all by coming home some ten days earlier than expected. They had gone away the very same day of the wedding to visit relatives in the Black Country, leaving my husband and I most awfully alone together in the echoing corridors of the Hall. It seemed they had decided our honeymoon had ended.
A cry went up around the house within moments of the sound of the coach wheels rolling up the end of the drive, and once the news of their return had spread as far as the servants’ quarters, there began the tap-tap sound of running feet, which echoed around the corridors and made me open the door of my chamber to see if there might be a fire or the Dutch had come to murder us all in our beds. A girl I recognized as the laundry wench, a slight girl with a drooping gait and bright eyes, rushed past me then, her arms full of linens. I called to her.
‘Tell me, girl – what on earth is the matter?’
She paused, and turned to me, dropping open her mouth to see me, for she was one of the lowly servants who was always hidden away backstairs and unused to being spoken to by the quality. She blushed and dropped a wobbly curtsey.
‘Please, my Lady,’ she panted, ‘’tis my Lady Ty – nay – the Dowager and my Lady Sibeliah who have returned before they was expected, and we backstairs all in a great pet to set the house to rights, for the grand sweeping is not until Friday.’ She looked at me, to see if I had comprehended her. ‘’Tis Wednesday,’ she added.
‘Ah I see,’ I said. ‘Thank ye kindly.’
‘My Lady,’ said she, and scuttled away.
After pinching my cheeks to rouse my complexion, I went down the stairs to make ready to welcome my new relations, while all about me the servants scurried to and fro to light the fires, polish the tables, and dust the ornaments, for, as I had already heard, my new mother-in-law was in the habit of running the tips of her fingers along surfaces, and woe betide if they came up with even a modicum of dust. I dawdled awkwardly in the hall, sniffing at the cleaning smells of linseed oil and soot, and then the door crashed open and a reedy girl with a frizz of light hair stepped over the threshold, her blue eyes wide.
‘Where is Master Brignall?’ she said to me, in an urgent voice with traces of a lisp. ‘Mama will not get down from the coach without help, and the coachman is a hired gentleman, and does not know how to hand her down the way she would have it.’
‘I will ring for him,’ I said, picking up the silver hand bell from the hall table. I jangled it.
The girl pushed the velvet hood of her cloak back and leant against the wall panels, steadying her breath. We looked at one another.
‘Forgive me,’ she said in a slow voice, ‘I am in such a quandary that I have not said “how do”. Hello again, Ursula.’
I went to her and kissed her cheek. There was a strange scent that clung to her that was half-rotten, half-sweet. ‘Sister,’ I said. ‘I am pleased that you have come home, for I have been lonely here without a playmate, and Tyringham away.’
‘Oh is he away?’ she said carelessly, her eyes widening. ‘He’s always doing that. I expect you’ll have to get used to it.’ I felt that she was watching me.
‘Oh aye,’ I agreed heartily lest she think me a weakling, but then Master Brignall had come into the hall, and was out the door, without a glance at either of us.
‘He’s famous devoted to her,’ said Sibeliah. ‘He has been her butler these fifteen years, and knows her ways better than anyone.’
Snatches of a woman’s brittle voice floated through the open door to where my new sister and I stood.
‘... no one here to greet me, for shame...’
Then the rumbling of Brignall’s voice, but I could not hear what it said, and the Dowager came slowly through the door, leaning on his arm, with a great rustling of skirts, for she wore them very long and black; she looked shrunken inside her clothes, as if she played at dressing up in her mother’s things, but still she peered down at me.
‘What’s this? Is this Ursula?’ she said, her eyes darting from me to her daughter. She released Brignall, who gave me a sour look, and disappeared down the corridor.
‘Yes, Mama,’ Sibeliah said, before I could open my mouth to speak. ‘My brother is away and I believe she is in search of occupation.’
The Dow
ager swivelled her eyes towards me. ‘How diverting,’ she said.
There were three black patches on her cheek, and one, in a diamond shape, on the tip of her nose. Her hair was chalk-white, and swept away from her forehead, which was riven all over with deep, downward furrows, that looked to be the product of scolding. Her face was moonish pale, and seemed to rest, neckless, on her high lace collar. I would come to know she was never without these collars: prickly-looking things that made her throat red, for she was always scratching at them, and scraping her skin, but she would not leave them off, for she thought them fine, sewn as they were in a convent, in France.
She came towards me then and grasped my shoulders. ‘But you’re such a teeny thing out of your bridal gown,’ she said, catching me about the waist and squeezing me in a way that I did not like. Her hands felt strong and bony. ‘Such a little girl. Like a bird.’ She touched my cheek.
‘How do ye do, my Lady,’ I said, staring her in the face, for I did not know how I should conduct myself, and then, remembering my manners, dropped into a curtsey. ‘I am mighty pleased you have come home again.’
‘And bold too,’ she said, stepping back, and sweeping her eyes up and down my person. ‘My son told me so. Hmm, but you are young yet... A little wan – but that is to be expected in a new bride. I expect you have not been sleeping overmuch.’ Her eyes seemed to pierce into me. I began to feel a hotness seeping inwards from my ears.
‘We shall retire now,’ the Dowager said, holding her arm out for Sibeliah, ‘for it has been a long journey. But we shall converse a little more at supper, for I would like to know all about my new daughter. My son has told me you are a scholar.’
She seemed to be expecting an answer to this so I half-mumbled an ‘Aye’.
‘How peculiar,’ she said, her black eyes still pointed at me. ‘Fare thee well.’
Sibeliah tittered.
‘Fare thee well,’ I said.
The Illumination of Ursula Flight Page 14